Hivemind to be leveraged for autonomous maritime operations under Shield AI and HII partnership
NewsSeptember 10, 2025
LONDON -- DSEI UK. Shield AI and HII announced today at DSEI UK 2025 -- ongoing now in London -- a partnership to advance modular, cross-domain mission autonomy. Under the agreement, Shield AI’s Hivemind mission autonomy software will be leveraged with HII’s Odyssey suite to develop next-generation autonomous solutions.
“By pairing Shield AI’s cutting-edge Hivemind software with HII’s Odyssey suite, we are creating scalable, modular solutions that will give U.S. and allied forces an operational edge across every environment — air, land, surface, and undersea,” said Eric Chewning, executive vice president of maritime systems and corporate strategy at HII.
“Our partnership with HII expands our commitment to delivering autonomy rapidly, safely, and repeatedly at scale across all domains,” said Nathan Michael, Shield AI’s CTO. “As we look toward the future of autonomy, we see our partnership with HII as a step toward redefining what maritime operations will look like.”
Hivemind is Shield AI’s autonomy software that enables unmanned systems to execute complex missions with high reliability in GPS- and communications-denied environments. Built for modular integration and deployment across multiple platforms, Hivemind enables partners and customers to rapidly develop, test, and field mission autonomy on a wide range of systems, across every domain.
Hivemind has autonomously piloted air vehicles, including the MQ-20 Avenger, V-BAT, and F-16, according to Shield AI. This HII partnership begins Hivemind’s application in the maritime domain that will initially focus on uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) and expand into uncrewed undersea vehicles (UUVs), including platforms such as HII’s REMUS line.
Hivemind enables teams of systems to work together to support missions at the edge in the air, on the ground, at sea, and beyond, Michael explained; in this case, "the edge" is the platform itself, “as it has edge-level intelligence to see patterns, think for itself, and operate without communication. The [Hivemind-enabled] system can sense and make decisions and work with other Hivemind-enabled systems.”
Michael said that the solution is an example of MOSA (modular open systems approach), as it is highly modular and flexible. “We are not just building autonomous capability, but with the Hivemind enterprise we enable third parties to develop their own capability and not have a closed black box. We want to bring capability to as many programs as possible and integrate Hivemind into broader command and control [applications].”
That outcome calls for leveraging intelligence on those systems and broader ecosystems to interact with Hivemind to make decisions and achieve outcomes, he added.
On a broader level, Hivemind enterprise enables the U.S. and its allies and partners to accelerate autonomous development. With Hivemind “we were able to deliver capability in just two months and about $10,000” compared what previously would have taken a year and cost more than a million dollars, Michael noted. “It is the ability to speed to results and the speed to react to changing operational conditions.”
HII’s Odyssey autonomy software enables uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV), USV, and UUV individual and teaming operations across domains. Built on an open-standard, government-aligned architecture, Odyssey enables rapid integration of sensors, payloads, and third-party autonomy technologies, giving users the flexibility to develop and field new capabilities in step with emerging naval concepts.
The software platform has been leveraged on more than 35 USV platforms and logged more than 6,000 operational hours across the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Coast Guard, and allied programs, according to a company release.
